How many?
Where?
When?
Were they good?
Did they touch you the way I did?
Did they make love to you, or was it just fucking?
Did you think of me while someone else had their hands on you, the way I thought of you?
Did you softly sigh and whimper as you did with me?
Can you remember the precise position in which it was made?
Could you trace for me that very path they had caressed you, so I might glide my hand along the exact contours and endeavor to erase those lingering memories?
Will you recount, in precise detail, what it felt like, for I believe I need this to unravel myself?
How did their eyes linger on you when they touched your skin?
Adrian looked away, tilting his head slightly, and the shift in his body was enough to change the air between them, thickening it. Logan felt it in his chest, in the sudden tightness of his ribs, in the way his fingers twitched against Adrian’s skin.
“I’m sorry, forget it,” Logan blurted, reaching out, his fingers brushing against Adrian’s jaw, tilting his face back toward him. The pulsing pain in his voice betrayed him. “It’s none of my business.”
Adrian exhaled softly, a breath that barely reached the space between them. “No, it is.” His voice was quiet but steady. Still, he didn’t meet Logan’s eyes. Not yet. “Something like….” Adrian took a deep breath, “Two years,” he concluded, his chest moving sharply under Logan’s hands, as though the words themselves were contingent and, in being spoken, conjured a reality in which they became real.
Logan flinched. His whole body tensed, a sharp pull of muscle and breath, because two years ago—
That was them.
Which meant that whoever Adrian had been with had come right after Logan left.
A rebound, maybe?
A flash of nausea gripped him. Had it been between Australia and the wedding?
Had Adrian—my Adrian—been with someone else in their room, in their bed, where Logan had once held him, as if he were the only thing that mattered? That horrible bed. That ugly, scratchy comforter. That stupid, cheap little cabin that had meant everything because it had been theirs.
And now, the thought of someone else there, inhisplace, made him feel like a fool.
But screw it.
That bed was no place for Adrian to fuck anyone else.
Muscles bunched along Logan’s jaw, feeling the sharp edge of jealousy slice through him, even though he knew—God, heknew—he had no right. He had been the one to run. He had been the one to leave Adrian bleeding in a hotel room while he boarded a plane back to a life he didn’t want.
He had gotten married.
And yet, the idea of Adrian bringing someone else into his bed so soon after, the idea of someone else taking what had once been Logan’s to hold, made his stomach twist with something ugly and possessive. The idea of Adrian going to a random bar and picking someone up, bringing that man to their room and…
But then—
Adrian’s eyes fluttered open, their hue a storm-dark amber, limned with unshed sorrow. They glistened—no, theyached—with something more than grief: a fevered yearning, in which gentleness and devastation were intertwined.
And beneath that dark, forsaken swirl, innocence lay.
